Babelgum’s Valerio Zingarelli

October 2007

By Mansha Daswani

The peer-to-peer
global broadband platform Babelgum created quite a bit of buzz when it launched
earlier this year, announcing a deal with the acclaimed director Spike Lee, who
used the service to broadcast his previously unseen Unicef-commissioned
documentary Jesus Children of America. Devised by the Italian telecommunications mogul Silvio Scaglia,
Babelgum is positioning itself as a destination for niche content, offering up
programming from independent producers and international film festivals and
allowing users to create customized “channels” based on their interests.
Currently in a beta trial, Babelgum recently tapped former Vodafone executive
Valerio Zingarelli as its new CEO in the run-up to its full-scale commercial
launch next year.

WS: What is the next stage in Babelgum’s development?

ZINGARELLI: The real commercial launch for us is March 2008,
when we will start having revenues from advertising. The final version [of the
platform] will be much more advanced and sophisticated and very easy to use.

WS: How much content do you want to have on the
service by then?

ZINGARELLI: At least 50,000 hours. What is very important is
the type of content that we will present. The strategy for Babelgum is not to
duplicate traditional TV platforms. What we want to introduce is something
different and innovative.

We will [offer] four ways of accessing content. They are, number one, the [nine] branded
channels by Babelgum [Babel Sports, Babel Music and Babel Documentaries, among
others.] The second area is from events, for example, the Giffoni Film Festival
and the Rushes Soho Shorts Festival—niche cinema. The third area will be
My Babelgum, which is the personalization of the customer’s channel. For
example, if a customer is passionate about scuba diving, he can [search for] content related to scuba diving. The platform will frequently refresh this
content, searching through the hours in the library. The fourth area is the
communities. We want to facilitate the creation of communities of people around
certain topics. When you are watching something, you can send an e-mail or a
message to a friend or a member of the same community commenting on the video
content.

About 80 percent of
the 50,000 hours will be niche content, delivered to Babelgum by independent
producers. The other 10,000 hours will come from the [Hollywood] majors, and
from film festivals.

We want to
differentiate ourselves from the traditional TV platforms, but on the other
side we don’t want to duplicate YouTube or any other social networking,
user-generated content platform. All of our content will be professional
content.

WS: Are your deals with content providers based on a
share of the advertising revenues, or are you doing straight licensing deals?

ZINGARELLI: We are proposing revenue sharing from advertising,
and the percentage is flexible. It depends on the type of content and on the
type of provider. Some situations could be fifty-fifty, in others it could be
thirty-seventy. For certain situations, especially for the small producers, we
can give them a minimum guarantee [of $5 per 1,000 views].

WS: What kind of environment are you creating for your
advertisers?

ZINGARELLI: We have to be innovative. Most of our viewers will
be Internet surfers and they don’t dedicate too much time to a single thing.
They like jumping in and jumping out from different sites, so the time
dedicated to a single piece of content is typically short. The length of the
advertising clip must be correspondingly short. It also has to relate [to the
type of viewer and not just] to the content the viewer is watching. For
example, if you are a scuba diver and you are watching a video about scuba
diving, the platform will present to you an advertising clip that is related to
scuba-diving equipment or scuba-diving trips.

WS: How has the response been from viewers so far?

ZINGARELLI: We have 50,000 [beta testers.] We are receiving
[from them] confirmation of our strategy. They are web surfers, they don’t
really want to see traditional TV. They want to get from Babelgum something
which isn’t available on other platforms and which supports their passions. And
then they want to communicate [with each other].

WS: How has the transition been for you from the
telecommunications business?

ZINGARELLI: During my professional life I have always been in
the telecommunications business. I was the founder of OmniTel in Italy with
Silvio Scaglia in 1994. I became the global chief technical officer for
Vodafone [when it was acquired by OmniTel]. We were fighting to extend the
business [beyond] voice and SMS. [At Babelgum] we want to extend the types of
terminals you can enjoy web TV on. We have started with the PC, but as soon as
possible we will expand to widescreen TVs, using the PC as a bridge to connect
the web to the TV set. The third step will be the extension to, for example,
the PlayStation Portable (PSP). The fourth step [in three or four years] will
be to extend to mobile handsets.